How to Stop Having Pointless Meetings

Let’s face it — the team meetings won’t do anything for us if they’re not run well. Meetings need to be run correctly for teams to reap all those benefits.

Here’s how you should organize and run meetings to make sure you’re getting all of the benefits and reducing the drawbacks as much as possible for your team:

Step 1: Decide If You Actually Need a Meeting

Yes, meetings can be necessary. But they aren’t always. The first step to stopping pointless meetings is to ask yourself this question before every meeting you plan: Does this actually require a meeting?

To better decide whether an actual meeting is called for, you can ask yourself these questions, too:

1. Does this require outside input?
2. Is a real-time conversation needed to move forward?
3. How many people are necessary parts of this conversation?
4. Is a face-to-face meeting necessary, or would a phone call or online chat suffice?

Step 2: Create a Meeting Agenda

The first thing every meeting needs is an agenda. Do not ever slack off on this. Agendas are 100 percent necessary to 100 percent of meetings. If the meeting is actually needed, then so is an agenda.

The agenda’s format should be personalized to fit the meeting’s specific purpose. In addition to the topics the meeting is going to cover, it should include a clear goal or objective for the meeting, so everyone knows what they’re there to accomplish. It should include whatever topics are necessary to talk about to achieve the goals of the meeting. Follow the agenda, in order, and avoid pivoting to topics that aren’t included on the agenda.

There shouldn’t be too many topics for your team to be able to tackle them all in the allotted time for the meeting, and whenever possible, include some time at the end of the agenda for spontaneous creativity or brainstorming. If it isn’t needed, you can just end the meeting early, which everyone should appreciate.

Step 3: Set an End Time and Stick To It

One of the most annoying things about meetings is that they have a tendency to run over time. For every meeting you organize, set an end time and make it a hard limit on how long the meeting will last. Hopefully, that will help keep the meeting on track enough to accomplish what needs to be done before the end time. If the end of the meeting comes and you truly need more time to meet your goals, you can always schedule a follow-up.

Step 4: Have a Leader for Every Meeting

Just like every meeting needs an agenda, it also needs a leader to ensure it follows the agenda and doesn’t veer off track. The meeting leader should:

• Schedule the meeting and send out invites to those who should attend.
• Create and send out the meeting agenda.
• Assign time slots to others who will speak or present at the meeting.
• Ensure the meeting stays on task and end times are respected.
• Assign tasks or follow-ups as needed.

Step 5: Only Invite People Who Really Need to Be There

Not everyone who regularly attends meetings actually needs to. When planning a meeting, carefully consider who you’re sending invites to. Only invite people who have value to add to the meeting or will take real value away from having been there — anyone else can probably just be filled in later.

Step 6: Don’t Be Afraid To Decline Meeting Invites

If you receive an invitation to a meeting, think carefully about the pros and cons of attending. If your presence will add real value to the meeting, or if you’ll take real value away from attending, you should go. Otherwise, don’t be afraid to decline the invitation and stick to doing your regular work. If you weren’t actually necessary to the meeting, it’s likely they won’t miss you, and you sure won’t miss the wasted time away from doing something that’s actually productive.

Meetings Don’t Have To Be Pointless

Yes, most meetings are pointless. But they don’t have to be. By following these steps, you can make sure your team gets all the benefits that come from having productive, necessary meetings, all while eliminating all that wasted company time that comes from having overly frequent, unproductive meetings.
Stop letting your meetings be a time-suck, and make them useful for once.

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